This is the english translation of an article that appeared in Germany DER SPIEGEL Magazine on October 17, 1994. Translated from German by Helga Kelley OPG#4769
This first generation of young people, whose everyday life fully revolves around the computer and telephone network, are just growing up in the USA. The Cyberpunks in San Francisco are the bohemians of the new digital media age -- mixing pop-culture with technology. Now the global media industry wants to market the ideas from this subculture.
Belladonna kneels in front of her altar. It is Saturday afternoon and in her room it smells of incense and unmade bed. On the shelf are three skulls, on the wall hangs a collection of black plastic purses. Tonight the roommates are celebrating a big party, and Belladonna is making a few final invitations in the electronic altar in the middle of her room. She has painted the damaged computer black and pink to match the decor of her room. Belladonna is actually called Kate, she's 27 but hides her age together with her face under a thick crust of make-up.
Belladonna sorts through her electronic mailbox: "Welcome to CyberDen. You have mail." But before she can read through the digital love poetry of her admirers, her pager beeps, a cigarette box sized radio receiver with display. The small announcement says, "I am at the Icon-bar. Have the smart drinks been mixed already? -Desmond."
A phone call or a note on the refrigerator would also have sufficed. But in the thoroughly electronic flat-sharing community of Belladonna and Desmond Crisis, 24, its: Only one who communicates through the digital data network really has something important to say.
Desmond and Belladonna belong to the first generation whose lives are totally connected to the global telephone and computer network, whose everyday life revolves around the Internet, mobile radio, and CD-ROM. The Cyberpunks, as they are called, would rather swim in the data streams than the natural waters of Belladonna's parents (Hippies through and through), in the green outdoors. The adults only understand Dada when Desmond says, "Everything is data."
The young citizens of this virtual Cyberland right now mix science with art, technology with pop-culture and create that which they call their future, instead of endlessly philosophizing over it. The real Cyberpunk life is going on in San Francisco. The city has always been the breeding ground for odd subcultures: The beatniks drank their espresso there, the flowerchildren lived through their drug dreams close to the Haight-Ashbury intersection, and the gays celebrated their coming-out there.
Now the youth believe in "Vorsprung durch Technik", as Desmond likes to say in German-- unintelligible to others but sounding splendidly technical. Silicon Valley, the supplier of cheap hardware and new computer knowledge, is only an hours drive away and the cultured remainders of the leading trendsetters are still solidly stored in the citys memory. "Here almost every hippie bartender knows the latest animation program," says Desmond.
Desmond doesnt look like a well-behaved technical pioneer, rather like a cross between a suburban punk and a sheriff. His uncombed hair is dyed petrol-green, and he hides his puny build with the armour of a heavy leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses.
This Saturday afternoon Desmond sits rather miserably in the Icon bar and sends a couple of urgent electronic letters to friends: Since yesterday I have been jobless and broke. Does anyone know of a good job? The electric bill is due.
For the past 18 months he worked for the garage company "Technopop" as Industry Relations consultant. Two programmers, a graphic artist and a musician, all between 21 and 25 years old, designed Zero Tolerance; there, a technically perfect video game full of blood and wicked aliens. The boss of the company, his 31 years of age distancing him light-years from the target group, sends Desmond as a technical spy to the competitors. There he has to, sometimes as a savvy customer visiting exhibitions, sometimes as a game evaluator, examine the programs of other companies in the industry.
Night after night, Desmond played Zero Tolerance; with Belladonna and other friends, daytimes he would get on both of the programmer's nerves with continuous new suggestions, "Until there was finally enough violence in it," he explains. Now after every kill there is not only endless images of dead body parts, but also buckets of blood which drip nice and slow from the virtual walls. The publicity poster has been hanging for weeks already in Desmond's room: "You don't play this game. You survive it."
Now Zero Tolerance; is finished, and at the end of the year the hearts of children around the world will beat faster. The programmers at Technopop are tinkering already with the next game and Desmond is without a job. Reason enough for a party at the cyberpunk household.
In the 'Scene' Desmond's parties are legendary, they can be considered as modern editions of Gertrude Stein's 'Salons'. Musicians with goatees, black-clothed up-and-coming authors and arrogant young producers meet with bleary-eyed programmers and soldering iron artists who would also like to have some bohemian qualities in their lives.
Almost always at the cyberpunk parties two people meet up whose talents and contacts complement each other. Who knows, perhaps out of this networking of the "Beat-techs", as they have named themselves, the next multi-media best seller will be produced. A cool video game or perhaps a tour through the paintings of Edward Munch. The big media groups, Time-Warner, Bertelsmann and Paramount have branches in the region, always ready to pick up on new cyberpunk ideas. This evening, says Desmond expectantly, but not totally convinced that a junior manager from Paramount will be coming to the party, "Perhaps, he was not totally sure."
At around ten o'clock as the first guests trickle in, Belladonna and Desmond have changed their household into a multi-media amusement park. Five big screens are in the living room, three other rooms are equipped with televisions and video recorders. On every one of the seven telephone lines there is at least one computer. Three replacement devices are lying in wait, at the last party there was an unpleasant blackout.
Two video game programmers from Silicon Valley have come and are showing their latest work only for the select group. A brutal karate fighting game, underscored with a heavy metal soundtrack, that is almost catching up with the quality of the cheap films from Hong Kong. "Yes, now rip out his liver," roar three blond youths in front of the big screen.
Desmond guides newcomers into the kitchen. Beer, vodka, assorted pills or hashish? Especially liked are Belladonna's smart drinks. What is in them, she won't reveal. "No legal substances," she jokes, but no alcohol, it is the bitterest awful stuff, not something to help one allegedly think faster. For one year now, Belladonna has been faithfully going to her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
Her weakness for alcohol is a memory from the time she started out as a disk-jockey at the small radio station. At that time she played in her broadcasts bands like "Nine Inch Nails," who produce industrial noise and in one of their videos show how a naked person is dismembered in the gears of an overpowering machine.
Belladonna is the connection of the cyber-household to the musician's and writer's scenes. Desmond is the computer freak with a certain flair for the fluent transition between hard and software: "It is all information, whether it's films, books, music, or videogames. We are all artists," he says.
On the two televisions in the dining room, fast-paced, cool, science fiction films from Japan are being shown. The plot is the same for all of the videos, constant repetition of the cyberpunk myths: a handful of people fight against computers and war-robots, who have already long since been scrambling for world domination. Loud industrial rock from the stereo drowns out the sound from the films, but Desmond and his friends know the dialogue by heart.
The cyberpunk philosophy has been portrayed best in the film, Bladerunner, with it's deep urban ravine setting, where Detective Deckard hunts the robots who are in human form, until at the end he in not sure if he himself is only a machine with artificial memories.
Desmond and company have seen this film already over fifty times-- as a pirated copy with Japanese subtitles, of course. Any other way "would be uncool", says Desmond. The shiny surfaces of the Starship Enterprise as utopia have been discarded.
On the worn couch, a couple of guests are typing, undisturbed by the overload of information all around them, into a small computer terminal. With the keyboard they are exploring a simulated online play-world full of druids and witches.
Those who could not make it tonight to the cyberpunk household can at least participate via datalines and screens: someone is constantly sending location reports to the network. Seven hackers, a few of them too timid to overcome the three street corners to the household, others a couple of hundred miles away, are virtual guests.
Being a virtual guest was also Desmond's entry into the world of cyberpunk. In school he was no great athlete, no young beauty. "I was never really a popular type," he tells. A considerable handicap when one is growing up in a town called Novato, in Northern California.
Desmond didn't spend the evenings in the small town with a "bevy of babes," but rather always very near his two-way radio equipment. On many dark winter nights his radio friends raved about the computer chat-systems in San Francisco.
They said that through hacking he could pick up on the latest pirated video games and secret codes to get free telephone services. Only empty radio gossip, but at least he was able to take part in a couple of wild cyber-parties as an invisible guest. Incentive enough to leave his small town and move to San Francisco. "Without the computer systems I would still be out on the farm with the cows," tells Desmond.
In the fast-growing computer and video game industry he found a couple of temporary jobs without much effort. He brought all the necessary fascination for all types of machines. It was at that time that he began to call himself Desmond Crisis, "I seem to have made a trademark out of my name." He doesn't reveal his birthname to anyone, not even Belladonna knows it.
The stage name and colored hair make him well-known in the industry. After a year in San Francisco Desmond became a high-paid product manager for the American subsidiary of ASCII corporation of Japan, even though his position lasted only for a couple of months. Whenever Desmond finds out that his technical passion of the industry amounts only to a flash in the pan, he organizes a high-tech party, a technical cult-festival, in order to fish for the next cool job.
Coolly, yet courteously, Desmond finds out from the chaos of media and guests in his house, of his next possible paycheck. "Hi, I'm Desmond. Here is my card. By the way, I have recently become available." On the card is just enough room for his whole arsenal of communication: Telephone, assorted pagers, two electronic addresses and three different radio frequencies.
A small group of guests have moved to the balcony. With a red laser they are scaring passers-by, who think that they have unexpectantly wandered into a shoot-out between street gangs.
The laser, together with an antique amusement arcade machine were bought this morning at the big flea market in Silicon Valley. Once a month hackers in sandals meet with radio hams with pronounced pot-bellies. Here, a clumsy old oscilloscope can be traded for a handful of the right computer chips.
On his tours of the flea market, Desmond always carries two radios in order to be in constant contact with his friends. "Behind the sun-umbrella, 30 degrees east, 170 meters away, microphones are being sold." His speech is precise-- every word is as concise as a packet of data on the network. "I hate babblers. Through radio I have learned to think and speak very clearly," he says.
Technology has always been a way for him to come into contact with others, to escape narrowness and to be taken seriously. At the flea market Desmond meets an old acquaintance, a private detective named Frank. For his office he has already done some snooping in the computer network. "Nothing Illegal," says Desmond. "I looked up credit card information, driver's licenses and bank accounts, just trifles."
Now Desmond has another chance to do some hacking for Frank again. This time Frank is looking for a particular programmer who is breaking into some unpublished software. Desmond should check around the network about it. One hundred dollars is given to Desmond right away as an advance. The electric bill is assured. The screens don't have to go off. The party can go on.
Not until about six in the morning do the last cyber-fans stumble out into the cold reality. "The sky looks like the TV tuned to a dead channel," says someone.
...And no one can switch it off.
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